


for the world's more full of weeping

by SoDoRoses (FairyChess)



Series: Love and Other Fairytales [3]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cannibalism kinda, Corporal Punishment, Fantasy Violence, Gen, M/M, Needles, Roman and his grandma bitch at eachother a lot but theyre not really mad, Roman centric, Roman gets his tendency to affectionately bully his friends honestly, Stitches, Swearing, TheatreGeek!Roman, fairies eating people whatever thats called, lol humanitarian, theyre just Like That
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 20:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyChess/pseuds/SoDoRoses
Summary: The forest raises Roman as much as his grandmother does (maybe even more)





	for the world's more full of weeping

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the poem Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats

“Mamaw, the demons killed another snake!” said Roman, watching the chickens out the living room window.

“Roman Joshua Gage,  _how_ many time to I have to tell you not to insult my chickens?”

“But they’re  _evil_  Mamaw!”

May Gage, Roman’s grandmother, came wheeling around the corner, swinging her oven mitt like a weapon and catching Roman about the shoulders with it.

“Stop yer caterwaulin’, go feed the chickens, and then get back in here and start yer readin’! You are gonna finish  _Meditations_  today if I have to tie you to the table!”

Roman let out the most theatrical groan he had in his repertoire.

The sack of chicken feed wasn’t quite big enough for Roman to drag it anymore – when he’d turned 11 he’d shot up in height, and now even with his arms hanging free the bag didn’t touch the ground. He considered slouching enough to make it drag anyway. But he figured if it tore and he spilled it, Mamaw would just make him get another and feed the stupid chickens anyway.  _And_  she’d be mad about him wasting it.

He started walking around the house, trying to figure out which direction it had decided to face today and therefore which way the stupid chicken coop was. Of course it was on the side opposite the way he started, because the house was contrary like that.

One of the chickens happened to be looking up as he came around the corner – or just sensed him coming with its creepy demon bird powers, who knew – and started screeching. Once one of them went it set the rest of them off and they all crowded around the gate making a racket, a cacophonous sea of speckled black, brown and white.

“Get back!  _Back_  you confounded birds-”

“ _What did I say?_ ” Mamaw shouted out the kitchen window.

“Mamaw, I am a  _valiant knight_ , I can’t be seen feeding  _chickens!”_

“Who’s gonna see ya? Me? Jax? I changed yer diapers and ya squeal like a pig when Jax swoops at ya. Knight or not, yer not pullin’ the wool over either one of  _our_  eyes,”

“Jax eats  _roadkill,_  who cares what  _he_  thinks?”

“Quit givin’ me lip and  _feed the damn chickens!_ ”

“I’m  _doing_  it!”

Roman opened the gate as little as possible and squeezed through the gap, shuffling his feet side to side and pushing the chickens back with his shins. Once inside, he latched it behind him and opened up the bag.

One of the chickens stabbed it’s little dagger beak into his hand and he yelped.

“You cursed little-!”

“Boy, I swear I will whup you-”

“But she  _pecked_ me, Mamaw, I’m  _bleeding_! I’ve been injured in the line of duty! Where is your compassion for your only beloved grandson?”

Mamaw finally cracked, her hacking cough of a laugh carrying out the window and Roman grinned.

“Would ya just-”  _wheeze_ “-feed the birds, ya menace?” she laughed.

Still smiling, Roman cast the feed as far away from him as he could, sending the chickens clucking and pecking in every direction.

He heard a squawk and looked up to the roof.

“Good morning, Jax,” said Roman.

The buzzard hissed back in greeting.

“Find lots of tasty dead things recently?”

The bird screeched back indignantly and swooped of the roof, coming so close his wing ruffled Roman’s hair as Roman yelped and dove out of the way.

“Birds! Moody, squawking  _featherbrains_ , all of them-”

“Oh yes, they’re all just monsters, s’nothin’ to do with the way you pick and pester ‘em,”

“I was only making conversation!”

“Don’t you think I don’t know yer just stallin’ ‘cuz you don’t wanna do yer Latin, ya little shit,”

Roman didn’t really have a retort for that because, well, it was true. He  _loathed_  Latin, almost as much as he hated Greek. It had been ten times easier reading Antigone in English than in Greek, and he had a feeling Meditations was going to be a similar experience.

He much preferred Spanish, even if he had to use the computer for that class because Mamaw didn’t know it. Greek had all sorts of sounds that didn’t come naturally to him at all, and Mamaw was constantly lamenting his pronunciation. Latin was worse – five hundred words for killing people and not a single one for  _subtlety._

He dragged his feet back to the front porch with all the dramatics of an innocent man going to the gallows.

“Shoes!” shouted Mamaw as he walked through the door. He rolled his eyes.

“Because I don’t know  _that_  after ten years,” he muttered.

“Oh, really, ya  _always_ remember to take of yer shoes? That’s funny, ‘cuz I distinctly remember  _somebody_  trackin’ river mud all over my nice clean kitchen floor after comin’ back from the woods at the ass-crack of dawn,”

“I was being  _chased_  by a  _red-cap,”_

“Ya got steel toed boots and an iron dagger for  _what_  then?”

“How do you expect me to stab a red-cap with a twelve inch dirk? He only came up to my knees!”

“I hear sass, but I don’t hear no  _sittin’ at the kitchen table and readin’ Meditations,”_

Roman finished wrestling off his shoes and slumped to the bookshelf. He pushed the glass knickknacks and charms and candles out of the way, dragging Meditations down and taking it to the table.

As he sat, Mamaw leaned around him – barely having to move from her place at the stove in their tiny kitchen -  and placed a plate of eggs, toast, and sausage next to him.

“You get any egg yolk on that book and there will be  _hell to pay_ ,”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said sneaking a kiss to her cheek. She ruffled his hair – almost exactly how Jax had – and turned back to the pot on the stove.

“Is that dinner or medicine?” said Roman, unable to tell from the smell like normal.

“ _Rea-ding,_ ”

“ _Okay_ , okay, I’m doing it!”

Roman spent the rest of the morning slogging through the text, even as the kitchen got hot with Mamaw’s cooking behind him. When he got stuck on a word, he would lean back and tap Mamaw on the arm. She would turn, read the word, and then talk around it in infuriating circles until he somehow figured it out in spite of her being no help at all.

When he finished, he snapped the book shut and slumped in relief.

“Can I please read something in  _English_  now?”

“I know damn well you already finished Watership Down – if you wanna move on to English it’ll be  _writin’_  the report, not readin’ the book again for fun,”

“How do you always  _know_?”

“Don’t you know by now that I know everythin’, Roman?”

“One day I’m gonna catch you looking at me with eyes in the back of your head,” Roman replied, grinning at the ceiling.

“They ain’t  _in_  the back of my head. They’re in the  _walls_ , of course,”

Roman lost it, giggling helplessly. Mamaw let out a triumphant “Ha!”, turning on her heel and cackling while she dug her fingers into Roman’s neck and wiggled them. Roman yelped and batted at her hands to no avail.

“Mercy, mercy! Pity your flesh and blood, you heartless  _crone_!” he laughed.

She smiled smugly and patted his cheek.

“‘A pity beyond all telling…’” Mamaw began.

“‘… Is hid in the heart of love.’” Roman finished.

“Very good; who said it?”

“Yeats, of course,” Roman replied, “It’s cruel of you to tease me with poetry if I have to do a report,”

“Well I’m a ‘heartless crone,’ ain’t I?”

“I should hide your teeth for the way you torment me,”

“Go get on the computer and start yer report or I’ll  _show_  you torment, you little parasite,”

Roman spent another hour at the computer, writing his report and occasionally lamenting out loud that reports were the only thing in the world awful enough to make reading not fun. Mamaw alternately ignored him, swore at him, and on one memorable occasion, chucked a plastic cup through the living room and hit him in the back of the head.

Lunchtime rolled around and Roman already knew he wanted to get out of the house.

“Can I have a sack?” he said as they put their sandwiches together (Mamaw thought liverwurst was “a god-damned abomination” and wouldn’t even touch it, so Roman made his own)

Mamaw hesitated for a moment and then sighed.

“You’ll mope the whole afternoon if I say no, won’t ya?”

“Absolutely,” he said seriously.

She rolled her eyes but pulled out the drawer next to her, tossing him the roll of parchment paper and a brown lunch bag.

“At least  _try_  not to get filthy,”

“I make no promises!” Roman shouted brightly over his shoulder, already barreling towards the door, swiping a handful of grapes as he went past the counter. He clumsily shoved the sandwich and the fruit into the bag while trying to get his shoes on with only his feet.

“Roman!” she called just as he was about to get out the door.

“Yeah?”

She smiled a little. “Tell him hello from Mamaw, okay?”

Roman felt his face turn pink. “Oh, you- just- shut up, okay!?”

Mamaw’s laugh followed him out the door as he made a beeline for the trees. He huffed in embarrassment.

The squawk startled him, and Roman couldn’t resist picking up a rock and winging it in Jax’s direction. It sailed past him by nearly a yard.

“One of these days you’re gonna sneak up on me and get stabbed, you great pigeon!”

Jax let out a series of screeches that were clearly him laughing at Roman’s expense.

“I’m serious!”

Jax kept cackling.

Roman scowled and turned on his heel, stomping through the undergrowth and pointedly ignoring the beat of wings behind him.

Jax followed him as far as he could.

Roman wasn’t entirely sure why nobody else could get to the clearing. Mamaw said she used to be able to get there, but she definitely couldn’t now, and she didn’t like to talk about it. The only other living things Roman had ever seen there were the spiders.

He walked around in concentric circles for a while – the clearing had about as firm a relationship with its place in the forest as the house did. It still never took him longer than about fifteen minutes to find it.

The light seemed to materialize out of nothing when he took another turn, and Roman broke into an excited sprint. He broke through the treeline with a shout.

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,”

Silence, as usual.

“Yeah, I wasn’t really expecting that one to work,”

Roman walked at a more sedate pace up to the shining casket, plopping down near the head, where he could see the pale face of the fairy prince through the clear crystal.

“Mamaw says hi,” he began, shooing some of the iridescent spiders away from the fairy’s face. “I know I tell you that every time, but she says it every time,” he turned away and started pulling out his lunch.

“I don’t know how she always knows when I’m coming to see you. I don’t know how she knows most things, though,” he shrugged, in spite of the fact that the fairies eyes were closed.

And in spite of the fact that he hadn’t moved a millimeter in the entire time Roman had been coming here.

Roman had stumbled across the clearing when he was nine – which was also when he’d fallen in love. With his dark hair and sharp features, set like a jewel in the glittering crystal in the center of a clearing where the sun always shone perfectly down on him, the boy in the casket had been the most beautiful thing Roman had ever laid eyes on.

He was older than Roman – or he looked it anyway. Who could tell with fairies? And he  _was_  a fairy, unmistakably. No human could look so perfect, like they were carved from marble.

Roman chattered away, telling the fairy about finishing Meditations and Watership Down, how much he hated doing reports and acting out Mamaw’s vicious liverwurst diatribe. He paused every so often, giving the fairy space to respond, and even though he never had, Roman still felt a little disappointed each time.

He was so caught up in his reenactment of throwing the rock at Jax that he almost didn’t hear the rustle behind him.

Roman leapt to his feet and spun around, astonished – nothing had  _ever_  gotten in the clearing besides the spiders, he’d never even seen _other kinds of spiders –_ and he didn’t even have his knife on him.

But on the edge of the clearing was not a fae sneaking up on him – it was…

It was just… a cat?

The cat tilted it’s head.

Roman stared at it –  _her,_ his mind supplied for who knows what reason – and for several long moments they both just stood there.

Roman waited for it to morph into something, but it just kept sitting there, blinking at him with huge yellow eyes.

Roman took a hesitant step forward. The cat mirrored him with a couple steps of it’s own.

“O… kay,” said Roman. He approached the cat slowly, and she seemed perfectly happy to match pace with him and meet him halfway. When he held out his hand he half expected to pull it back with missing fingers. But she just came him a cursory sniff and then shoved her head into his hand, imperiously demanding to be petted.

Roman’s heart melted.

“Oh, you’re not a monster at all are you? You’re just a sweet kitty. Such a pretty girl,”

She started winding her way around his ankles and Roman felt like he could  _hear_  her thinking “yes, I am, pay attention to me peasant,”

Now that she was closer Roman could see that she really was a very pretty cat, with dark tortoiseshell coloring and very sleek fur. She was not quite full grown – she still had that stretched-out-kitten look of an adolescent cat. Roman leaned down to pet her again and she bypassed his hand entirely and leapt into his arms.

Roman made a noise that would have been mortifying if Mamaw or Jax had been nearby, cooing sweetly at the cat as it rubbed it’s face all over his neck.

When she finally seemed satisfied with the amount of snuggling she’d received, she hopped down from his arms and meandered over to the casket. She braced her paws on the shining gold base and lifted her head over the lip, looking through the crystal into the fairy boy’s face.

“Say hello, cat,” said Roman, standing over her. She chattered into the casket like she could understand his request and Roman barked a laugh.

He noticed the shadows had shifted their angles, tilted the other way now. He sighed.

“I have to go,” he said to the fairy, “I’ll try to come back soon, okay? Maybe the cat can keep you company,”

And that was the crux of it – Roman came because he was in love, but he stayed because he knew what it was like to be lonely. And if only Roman could come here, that meant only Roman could be this boy’s friend.

Roman rested his head on the glass for a moment, then grabbed his lunch sack and headed home.

* * *

Back at home, the rest of the day went on as it always did. As the sun started to sink in the sky, bathing the whole forest golden-orange, the air grew tense and prickly. Roman wondered if she was going to say anything about it tonight.

He changed into his hunting clothes – sturdy jeans and steel toed boots, a jean jacket and a white shirt. He arranged his red sash over his chest, the iron dagger hanging from his belt.

When he came back down from his room, Mamaw was sitting in her huge green chair by the fireplace, knitting something fiercely. She looked like she’d swallowed a lemon.

“I’m going hunting,” he said, even though he knew she already knew.

“What?” she asked curtly.

“Crybaby. By the bridge,”

Her mouth twisted.

“I’ll have the stitches ready,” she said flatly.

“Have you no faith in me?” he tried with a hesitant grin.

She said nothing. Her silence was more cutting than anything she  _could_  have said.

As Roman trudged through the forest – so different from earlier, with Mamaw’s silent condemnation following him rather than her laughter chasing him out the door – he made no effort to be quiet. As he approached the river, he adjusted his sash so the dirk was under his jacket and whistled brightly. He started fishing around in the river mud for skipping stones. He spent maybe twenty minutes at that, until the sun was past the horizon and the sky had turned the fading gray of twilight.

When he had a suitable pile, he made himself at home on a stepping stone on the bank and started skipping rocks like he hadn’t a care in the world.

He was at it for another half an hour. The sun was gone now, and the moon was only just full enough that he could see – even Roman wasn’t brave enough to be out and about on a full moon. Just when he was about to give up and call the night a wash, he heard the crying.

Hearing it, Roman understood how so many people had drowned at this bridge. It sounded just like a baby – like the heartbreaking, pleading wail of a terrified child. It made Roman’s skin crawl, how something could sound so human when he knew it wasn’t.

“Hello?” he called, trying to sound curious, “Is someone there?”

The crying grew louder.

Roman started to pick his way across the stepping stones, knowing he was gambling on the river’s depth – just because he could wade here during the day didn’t mean it would stay that way when magic was involved.

“Do you need help?” he asked the open air, straining to listen for the direction it was coming from. He was definitely getting closer.

He was about two thirds across the river when he saw the shape on the other side – a pudgy wrist and a round, pale head, like a toddler had gotten stuck in the muck.

“Hey!” he shouted, and he barely had to fake the panic in his voice – his heart was racing. The wailing continued, and the pale shape leaned towards him as if reaching out for help.

Roman reached forward with his left hand and gripped the dagger underneath his jacket with his right.

“Do you need hel-”

All hell broke loose.

The creature lunged. Roman dove forward under its arm. It was big – much bigger than he’d thought, 10 feet and made of muck and rotting branches, wet and dripping. It smelled like rot and dead fish, the pale lure on top of its head a mockery of a child’s face. It’s wail morphed into an inhuman screech.

Roman gave up all pretense and slashed downward with the dagger. It was bigger, sure, but he was faster.

It’s scream made the water ripple, but Roman’s blade had gotten stuck in its tangled body. He threw his weight back but the knife was stuck fast.

He was so focused on retrieving his knife he didn’t see the creature’s other limb until it was crashing down on his head.

Roman stumbled, stunned, his head spinning. His arms throbbed – his hand was sticky with something, but could be mud or his blood. He’d gotten the blade loose, but in the scuffle it had gone sailing up the riverbank. There was ten feet of angry crybaby between him and his only weapon.

He may, possibly, have bitten off more than he could chew.

Suddenly, a second scream joined the first and Roman panicked – he couldn’t  _possibly_  fight two of them.

But the scream seemed different, and Roman only had a moment to wonder what the hell was happening before a black shape leapt from the upper bank and launched into the crybaby’s face.

Roman stared in stunned silence, mouth gaping.

It was the _cat._

She was doing a pretty good job, too – the crybaby’s face was a river of something black and shiny like tar – it might have been its tears or its blood, but Roman was hoping it wasn’t going to be around long enough to tell him.

Taking advantage of the distraction, he skidded through the reeds and wrenched the dagger out of the mud. Then, while the creature was still turned away, Roman leapt onto it back and stabbed it through the neck.

The sound of sizzling flesh joined the creature’s screaming, which turned garbled and choking. The black tar blood sprayed out from the wound and Roman got some of it on his face. He gagged, losing his grip.

He slid to the ground, taking his blade with him, and the creature’s neck squelched as it came free. It gave one more garbled sound, stumbled, and fell face down in the muck.

Roman put his hands on his knees, breathing heavy. He blew his hair out of his face and looked down at the monster.

It hadn’t shrunk, but it’s death had diminished it. It was longer frightening – just mildly disgusting. The cat was gone.

Roman was shaking, and when he opened his mouth to take a deeper breath a wild laugh came out. He felt giddy, high on the adrenaline of the fight.

He spent a few minutes searching for the cat, but found no trace of it. It was like it had just evaporated.

The moon was now directly overhead, and Roman thought of Mamaw, worrying and waiting for him to get back. He hoped silently the cat was okay, and started to make his way home.

* * *

Roman hated stitches.

At least when she doused his arm with iodine it only stung for a moment. Stitches would hurt for days afterword, and he couldn’t go into the forest while they were healing in case of infection.

To keep his mind off the pinch-pull of the needle, he counted all the candles in the kitchen. When he ran out of candles he counted sun catchers, and then all the wind chimes hung in the windows.

He gave up.

“Mamaw, please say something,” he said quietly.

The silence continued.

“I- I don’t want to upset you. If it bothers you, I won’t-”

“Do not finish that sentence, boy” Mamaw snapped.

Roman pressed his lips together.

“We don’t make promises we don’t intend to keep in this house,”

“If you asked me not to-,”

“Which is exactly why I  _don’t_   _ask,”_  she cut him off, snipping the thread with a tiny pair of scissors and tying off the end.

Roman stared at his hands.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “Why do you let me go if you hate it so much?”

May stared at the wall as she washed her hands in the sink. She was quiet for a long time, and Roman wondered if she’d gotten lost in thought or if she was just ignoring him.

“‘It is in our nature to be greedy,’” she said. Roman tilted his head, puzzled. That was her quoting-a-poem voice but he didn’t recognize the words at all.

“‘We covet and we hoard our favorite things,’” she continued, “‘Cannot help but keep them close to us. Too tight, and then we mourn their shattering,’”

Roman thought for a long moment, but came up with nothing.

“Who said it?” he asked.

Mamaw’s mouth twitched. “Your mother,”

His mother. A ghost. Less than even that – a ghost you could see, or feel. A cold spot, a white fog. His mother was no more real to him than any of the names in his textbooks. Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Abigail Gage. Sometimes, though he’d never admit it, he kind of forgot he had one. He’d always had Mamaw, and he’d never felt like he was missing out on anything.

“Your mother had many opinions on the way our family has always done things,” said Mamaw after another pause. “I do my best to do right by her memory, and do right by you, now. If lettin’ you pick a fight with every imp, gnome and pixie that looks at you crossways keeps you occupied than I’m not gonna be the one to tell you to stop,”

It was more than he’d ever gotten out of her before, and Roman felt himself relax, if only a little bit. It wasn’t a blessing – not even close – but it wasn’t a condemnation either, and Roman could, on occasion, be grateful.

She gave one last heavy sigh, cupped his face and tapped it a bit.

“Go to bed,” she said, “We need sleep, you more than me,”

“I’m not the one yawning,” Roman tried hesitantly.

“And I ain’t the one that fought a 4-yard crybaby with a goddamn kitchen knife, Roman Joshua Gage, now git,”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, unable to keep the relief from his voice. But instead of moving towards his room, he wormed his way under her arm and held her as tight as he dared.

She didn’t push him off – she never did, but somehow it always terrified him she might – and squeezed him back just as tight. He took a deep breath, surrounded by her comforting smell of mint and smoke and old lady. He swallowed around the lump in his throat.

“Love you big bunches,” he said thickly.

Mamaw chuckled and kissed the top of his head.

“I love you big bunches, too”

* * *

“Bacon or eggs?” Mamaw said as Roman walked into the kitchen the next morning.

“I’ll make the eggs,” said Roman quickly, scrambling for the second cast iron skillet.

“You great baby,”

“Look, just because  _you’ve_  got leathery dinosaur skin that doesn’t react to popping grease doesn’t mean-,”

“ _shut up,”_ Mamaw snapped suddenly, and Roman’s mouth snapped closed. Mortified, he thought he might be about to cry – she had never  _really_ told him to shut up, not like  _that –_ but then she tapped her ear.

They both stood in silence, listening, and then Roman realized what she must have heard. It sounded like -  crying?

No – not  _crying._

Roman laughed suddenly, bounding to the front door.

“ _what_ in the sam hill do you think you’re doing  _get yer dagger,_ ” Mamaw hissed, but Roman ignored her and threw open the front door.

The cat sat back on her haunches and stared.

“There you are!” cooed Roman, and he was so happy he couldn’t even be embarrassed, “You didn’t get eaten! you’re a good smart kitty aren’t you?”

He scooped her up into his arms and turned.

“She helped me fight the crybaby!” exclaimed Roman, “she distracted it when I lost my knife, she was a brave little kitty, weren’t you?”

He couldn’t seem to stop himself from devolving into baby talk every time he looked at her.

When he looked back up, Mamaw had an indecipherable expression on her face.

After a moment, she seemed to shake herself.

“Well, I know better than to tell you we can’t keep her,” she griped, “She better not fight with Jax and she better stay  _out_  of the chicken coop,”

“Wait,  _really_?”

“Yes,  _really,_  she’s already picked you, if I told you no she’d just wander around here anyway. At least when she’s in the house she won’t be terrorizing my birds,”

She muttered something then, and Roman caught “cat person” but nothing else.

She pointed at him with the tongs and glared. “She’s your responsibility, now, let’s just be clear. Food and water, her litter, and if she shreds my damn furniture you will be knittin’ things to sell at the farmers market until your fingers bleed to replace it,”

“Yes!” said Roman with a little fist pump. He jostled the cat, who made a very displeased noise.

“Sorry, sorry,”

When they sat down for breakfast the cat made herself at home at Roman’s feet, rubbing her face all over his ankles. Roman occasionally snuck her bits of bacon when Mamaw wasn’t looking.

“You’re gonna make her fat,” said Mamaw without looking up.

Roman gasped indignantly. “How rude!”

Mamaw snorted and he tapped her lightly under the table with the foot that wasn’t being held hostage by a cat.

“Roman?” said Mamaw, and of course she had to try to talk to him just as he got a mouthful of egg.

“Yeah?” he managed to get out after he swallowed.

She pinched her mouth just slightly and then, like it cost her an enormous effort to say it, continued.

“You still want to go to public school?”

Roman actually dropped his fork.

“ _Yes,_ ” he said instantly, wondering where on earth this had come from and also not caring in the slightest.

Roman had wanted to go to Wickhills Public School for as long as he’d known it existed. He had Mamaw, and – grudgingly – Jax and the chickens, and he hung out with a few kids at the farmer’s market every Saturday, but he didn’t really… well he didn’t really have any  _friends_.

Mamaw eyed him over the top of her glass of orange juice, and whatever she found in his face made her nod.

“Alrighty then,” she said, “You finish out that report, and then ya can take the test. They’ll probably put ya in sixth or seventh grade. You’ll start in the fall,”

Roman couldn’t even think of words, he was so ecstatic. He let out an inarticulate squeal and leapt out of his chair, to the chagrin of the cat. He darted around the table and threw his arms around Mamaw’s neck, bouncing on the balls of his feet,”

“Thank you, thank you,  _thank you,”_

“Do we get up from the table before we finish our food in this house? Hmm?” she demanded, but she patted his arms and gave him a little kiss on his face anyway.

If he hadn’t been so distracted by his own happiness, he might have noticed that Mamaw didn’t look happy at all.

In fact, she mostly just looked  _scared_.

* * *

The cat seemed perfectly content to curl up wherever Roman was, although she clearly had a preference for being on top of him. Later that evening he sat on the overstuffed brown couch and leafed through the huge, crumbling book of Shakespeare’s plays.

“Beatrice?” he tried.

The cat didn’t react.

“No? Okay then… not Margaret, that’s an old lady’s name, I don’t need to be outnumbered… Ursula?”

The cat actually made a displeased noise that time.

“Too sea-witchy I suppose, you must like Disney, too. What about… Bianca?”

No reaction.

“Goodness, you’re picky, the books only so long you know. I’m going to run out of names at this rate,”

The next name made him pause.

“Not that one,” he muttered, but it would bother him if he skipped it.

“Desdemona?”

Instantly, the cat let out a purr that rumbled through his whole chest.

“ _Really?”_  he said incredulously, “Two-thirds of the way through the book and you settle on  _Desdemona_?”

She just kept purring.

Roman sighed. “Well, if you  _must_. I can’t be calling you that all the time though, it’s a mouthful. How about… Dizzy, for short,”

The cat continued to purr and rubbed her head underneath his chin.

“OK, Dizzy. Dizzy the cat. Dizzy-cat,”

Dizzy, clearly delighted, draped her whole body across his neck like a scarf. It tickled, and Roman laughed.

“Do you think they’ll like me at school, Dizzy-cat?”

She bumped his face as if to say, “Who cares,  _I_  like you,”

Roman grinned.

“Yeah, you’re right. Good point,”

He closed his eyes. She didn’t seem like she was gonna move any time soon, so he might as well get comfortable.

“Good point, indeed,”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] for the world's more full of weeping](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19350142) by [GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)




End file.
